The Milwaukee Leader

Health Talks
By William Brady, M.D.

Dr. Brady will answer all signed letters pertaining to health. Writers' names are never printed. Only inquiries of general interest are answered in this column, but all letters will be answered by mail if written in ink and a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Requests for diagnosis or treatment of individual cases cannot be considered. Address Dr. Brady in care of this paper.

WHAT'S IN A PORE?

Favorite mean assertions of mine:

The skin has no pores.

Neither food, nor water, nor medicine, nor air, nor gas, nor salve, nor poison is absorbed through the unbroken skin.

These are unadorned or naked physiological facts.

It seems that facts are annoying in any case, and when they're physiological facts they're downright irritating.

But readers who feel exasperated by these physiological facts will please bear in mind that they are not facts because I assert them, but that I merely mention them here because they are facts. We like to have an occasional fact in the paper. While fiction is entertaining, a convenient filler is always available at the factory in unlimited quantities, still, you know, it lends tone and character to a paper to publish a fact here and there, and if the facts are strategically placed, so as to catch the reader unawares, why, don't you see, the reader is thus unwittingly exposed to the risk of learning that something he knows ain't so.

That's what exasperates the complacent reader-the implication that he has been buncoed for years and years.

Being exasperated and annoyed, he pricks up his ears-which casts a long shadow-and looks the column over closely until he finds a name more or less akin to mine somewhere, and he proceeds to hector me about the facts I have been so unpolite and sarcastic as to mention.

Speaking of sarcasm-of it, not with it-I get regular lessons in sarcasm in the rather voluminous correspondence on the subject of pores.

People who feel they must preserve the pores of the skin at all hazards, or else go out and look for honest work, are past masters in the use of sarcasm. Their demonstrations rather spoil my own fondness for it, because after all it betrays weakness of position.

"At one time you state," writes a correspondent - though I never "state" anything, I merely say, mention or assert it-"that it is hokum to imagine the skin has pores, but in another place you say the skin excretes water and oil. If the skin has no pores, yet excretes water and oil the question, whether it sounds silly, ignorant or whatnot to you, arises in my mind that the skin must have pores and absorb. To me it seems that if the skin can excrete it can absorb. Of course, you know what is correct, and I admire and appreciate your writings, but I just do not understand the nonabsorbing excreting mechanism of the skin."

Now that's different. The young woman adds just the right touch of blarney in the right place.

I see. You think the function of the skin should be reversible. That is the view thousands of cosmetic nostrum makers take. It would be a dreadful situation for those of us with skins, however, for it would constantly expose us to risks which we ordinarily escape because the skin doesn't absorb things. Water runs down hill and will not run the other way. Several glands in the body excrete various substances but cannot be made to absorb anything. The sweat glands and the sebaceous (oil) glands of the skin are built and designed for excretion but not for absorption.

The popular use of liniments and similar applications to the skin, often with distinct benefit or relief from pain, seems to imply the absorption of something through the skin--indeed, exploiters of nostrums of this class dwell on "penetration" as a feature of the effect to be anticipated. Counter irritation is the usual explanation of the relief to pain or soreness. In many instances the liniment, salve or embrocation contains volatile ingredients which, becoming vaporized by the warmth of the body and friction, are inhaled more or less by the individual.

Experiments which have been conducted to demonstrate absorption through the unbroken skin leave little to conjecture on. Rather the conclusions reached from careful experiments are that no appreciable absorption can take place through the normal skin.

When you blister, scratch, scarify, puncture or cut into the skin, then it is comparatively easy to bring about the absorption of medicaments or poisons.

The principal purpose of my irritating repetition of the physiological facts about the skin is to save the unsophisticated reader the expense and time which are so often frittered away on "skin foods," "flesh builders," "developers" and the like, extravagant humbugs which become ridiculous enough when you finally acknowledge that the skin never absorbs anything.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

One Ear.

I am a young man, with a desire to study medicine, but I can only hear in one ear. Do you consider it advisable, and if so would my defect of hearing be much of a handicap? (F. O. A.)

Answer-If your good ear is normal, there should be no particular difficulty or handicap. I had only one good ear, yet I got to writing for newspapers, which is comparatively easy as long as you don't contradict yourself or the advertisers too often.

Lime Water.

Please tell me how to fix lime water for a baby. I purchased the lime water at a drug store and would like to know how much I should use in water and milk. (Mrs. S. F.)

Answer-Lime water is not necessary in the feeding of a healthy baby. Lime water is made by placing a lump of unslaked lime the size of a walnut in two quarts of boiled water in a crock or jar, stirring thoroughly and allowing it to settle; then pour off the clear liquid into a bottle, and you have lime water. About an ounce (two tablespoonfuls) of the lime water may be used in each quart of milk or modified milk, though nowadays it is generally advised that oatmeal water or barley water or just plain water be used instead. The purpose of lime water was chiefly to prevent formation of very large curds in digestion; the cereal waters will serve that purpose as well or better. As for providing calcium (lime) for nutrition, an ounce of milk contains more lime than an ounce of lime water.

Bankers Bite. Too.

I should like to know if this thing will do all its producer claims. It seems to me that, if it would really straighten ears, it would be put on the market. Will this or any other contrivance straighten protruding ears, or is surgery the only remedy? (H. L.)

Answer-Surgery is the only remedy. Yet no doubt the mail order faker who yearns to get your ear names some snug bankers as "references." Many banks lend themselves to the game. Of course, it is all respectable business.

(Copyright, National Newspaper Service.)

MARCEL AND CURL LAST LONGER
after a Golden Glint Shampoo,--Adv.